PROTECTIONS SOUGHT FOR GREAT WHITE SHARKS

Three conservation groups are seeking more state and federal safeguards for the ocean’s iconic predator: the great white shark.

Oceana, Center for Biological Diversity and Shark Stewards on Monday petitioned the California Fish and Game Commission to protect the creatures throughout their California range under the state’s Endangered Species Act. On Aug. 10, the groups asked the National Marine Fisheries Service to invoke federal Endangered Species Act protections for the West Coast population of great whites.

While the direct capture of great white sharks for sale is prohibited off the coasts of California and Mexico, young white sharks sometimes are killed via bycatch — unintentionally catching the sharks while fishing for commercially targeted species. The fisheries service says great white sharks are vulnerable to fishing pressure because they take 12 to 18 years to mature, often reproduce only every other year, produce few young per brood (only two pups in some species) and are caught in many types of fishing gear.

Conservationists said they are trying to reduce the incidental killing of sharks in gill nets and boost the reporting of such interactions through the use of observers onboard fishing vessels and limits on bycatch — measures that likely will draw opposition from the fishing industry.

The appeal for new protections is based on research papers in the past few years that underscored how small the population of white sharks is off the West Coast. A 2011 journal article in Biology Letters estimated there are 219 mature and sub-adult white sharks along the coast of Central California. That creates what environmentalists called an inherently high extinction risk.

“These results emphasize the critical need to protect and monitor white sharks; especially given genetic data indicating discrete population structure and the importance of sharks for the health of marine systems,” it said.

State and federal agencies are expected to spend months determining if new measures are warranted.